Field of the Disclosure
Embodiments are generally related to power management in integrated circuits, and more particularly to dynamic scaling of execution units on a graphics processor.
Description of the Related Art
Graphical output for a computer system is generally created using one or more graphics processors. Each graphics processor may include multiple graphics processor cores, and each graphics processor core may include multiple types of resources to perform various types of graphics operations. The various types of graphics operations utilize multiple types of graphics workloads, which each may use different resources within the graphics cores. For computationally intensive workloads, the graphics processor execution units are used extensively.
However, different graphics workloads utilize the execution units at different levels. Also, a particular graphics workload may utilize the execution units at varying levels over time while processing the graphics workload. Maintaining power to the graphics execution units introduces various costs to the computer system, including increased power dissipation and maximum load current. Accordingly, the computer system may benefit by reducing the number of active execution units during times of low utilization. However, reducing the number of active execution units reduces the execution resources available to graphics operations. Thus, existing mechanisms for scaling execution units may harm overall system performance.